The College of Foreign Languages at Huaqiao University, formerly known as the Department of Foreign Languagesof Huaqiao University, was founded in 1963. It offered undergraduate programs in Indonesian, English and Japanese. The Department of Foreign Languages began to recruit students for four-year undergraduate programs in English and Japanesein 1989. In September 2000, the Department was developed into the College of Foreign Languages, including the English Department, the Japanese Department, and the College English Department. The Translation Department was established in 2015 and also included in the College of Foreign Languages.The college was respectively authorized to confer master’s degrees in English Language and Literature in 2003, Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in 2016and Foreign Language and Literature in 2017. The college was approved as the Experiment Teaching Demonstration Center of Fujian Provincein 2017. It was approved to establish a provincial research center of humanities and social sciences. One year later, the subject of Foreign Language and Literature was listed on the Best Chinese Majors Ranking; English was listed as the national first-class undergraduate program, and Japanese the provincial first-class undergraduate program. The College ranked 53rd on the China University Translation Capability Indexin 2021.
The college is a member of the first-class discipline construction in the program of “Overseas Chinese Education and Chinese Culture Communication” in Fujian Province. It offers two graduate programs: Master of Foreign Language and Literature and Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI). Its undergraduate programs include English, Japanese, and Translation. Students can choose from Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic as their secondary language studies and optional modules. The college has a total enrolment of 1,116 students, including 166 postgraduates, more than 170 overseas students and 32 undergraduate classes. Nearly 80% of graduate students hold the CATTI (China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters)certificate. In the past years, the average passing rate of undergraduate students majoring in English and Japanese in the national TEM-4 and TEM-8 examinations is more than 20 percentage points higher than the average rate of national comprehensive universities. Additionally, the passing rate of CET-4 and CET-6 is more than 10 percentage points higher than the average rate of comprehensive universities in China. The first employment rate of English, Japanese and Translation majors ranked the top among all majors at Huaqiao University. The employment situation is bright.
The college has strong faculty with 119 teaching and administrative staff. There are 108 full-time teachers, including 7 professors and 30 associate professors. In addition, there are 10 foreign teachers from Britain, the United States, Japan and other countries. Among the teachers, 21 have doctoral degrees, and 4 are doctoral candidates.More than 70% of the teachers have overseas studies experience at famous universities in Britain, the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries.TheCollege has established Institute of Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Institute of Japanese Studies, Center for Foreign Literature Studies, Center for Translation Studies and two provincial research bases. Faculty members of the college have presided over 11 projects of National Social Science Fund of China (including one key project) and more than 20 ministerial and provincial-level scientific research projectsin the past five years. They also published over 500 papers (more than 70 papers on CSSCI, SSCI and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI)). The number of monographs, compilations and translations has exceeded 50. They have won the first, second and third prizes of provincial Social Science Outstanding Achievement Award altogether 7 times and respectively obtained first prize and second prize for Higher Education Teaching Achievements in Fujian province.The College is home to many outstanding scholars including one awarded as the Leading Talent in Philosophy and Social Sciences of Fujian Province, two awarded as the New Century Excellent Talent of Fujian Province,one awarded as the Cultivation Program of Outstanding Young Scientific Research Talents at Universities of Fujian Provinceand one awarded as the Introduction of High-level Talents of Fujian Province.Twelve of them are now serving as the president, vice president, executive director, etc. in the study association at the university.
The college intensively promotes the construction of teaching hardware. It has 12 Sanako language labs imported from Finland, one simultaneous interpretation lab and one computer-aided translation lab equipped with advanced Trados computer-aided translation software. The college has established English and Japanese reference rooms with a collection of more than 20,000 volumes. In addition, the college has rich teaching resources. For example, teachers and students have access to network teaching resources and foreign language education resources, such as MyET, MyJT English, Japanese Oral Training Platform, www.pigai.org (automatic English writing correction online service)and the VOD system.
The college has remarkable achievements in teaching. Two modules, College English Reading and Science Fiction Appreciation and Creative Writing, have been awarded as national first-class offline courses. The modules Improving English Reading and Writing 1 and Improving English Reading and Writing 2 have been awarded as provincial first-class online undergraduate courses. The modules Intensive Reading III, College English Reading and Science Fiction Appreciation and Creative Writing have been awarded as provincial first-class offline undergraduate courses. The Appreciation of Western Literary Classics module has been awarded as a provincial first-class online and offline hybrid undergraduate course. The modules Improving English Reading and Writing 1 and Improving English Reading and Writing 2 have been awarded asprovincial quality open online courses. The teachers at the college have also delivered excellent outcomes in various provincial or university-level English teaching competitions, which have been widely praised. More than ten teachers have won the Special Award for Outstanding Teaching and Outstanding Teacher Award at Huaqiao University.
The college promotes various after-class activities and thus strengthens teaching and learning effects. It has initiatedthe “Spring Voices in Three Foreign Languages” high-quality cultural activities on campus. Multiple activities have been held to improve students’ cross-cultural narrative ability in foreign languages, such as the 33rd “Spring Voices” and “Foreign Language Corner”. The institution “Foreign Language Bridge” selected volunteers to participate in a variety of important activities of translation. The “Foreign languages+” Talent school promotes the integrated development of professional education and social needs and establishes a comprehensive and three-dimensional “three-in-one education” mechanism. The college commits to improving the core competitiveness of students by promoting the integrated development of professional education and campus culture. Beyond that, the college emphasizes the development of diversification. Students of the college have won more than 30 outstanding and first prizes in national professional competitions in recent years.
The college has actively tapped its potential. It devotes to meet the demands of the society and serve for the society. There areexamination venues for Business English Certificate (BEC) and CATTI International. The college has been positively developing international exchanges and cooperation. Excellent students of English major have been selected to participate in master’s preparatory programs at well-known British universities, academic summer camps at famous British universities and exchange programs of Taiwan universities.The Japanese program has a strong momentum of development as it has established good cooperative relations with many famous universities in Japan and has carried out long-term faculty and academic exchanges.
The college is on the west side of Strait Economic Zone and faces both domestic and overseas studies. Taking “Serving Overseas Chinese and Spreading Chinese Culture” as its mission and constantly shaping new disciplinary characteristics, the college will strive for unceasingly enterprising and making unremitting efforts to promote the higher and faster development.
